Blood Trail:
A must-see film for photographers interested in the realities of conflict coverage
AUSTIN, TX (March 16, 2009) – When filmmakers Richard Parry and Vaughan Smith first meet Robert King in Sarajevo in 1993 he is a 23-year-old art and photography graduate from Tennessee with dreams of becoming the world’s youngest Pulitzer Prize winner. Their film "Blood Trail" (www.bloodtrailfilm.com), which follows King over the next 15 years through a number of conflicts, is a strangely touching and welcome antidote to sanctimonious portrayals of the lives of war photographers.
King comes across as a charming if callow rookie when we first meet him in Bosnia. It is not that he lacks motivation. Like all photographers who do this work there are many motives in play, some of which are not entirely clear to him. On the one hand he sees war photography as a fast track to fame, fortune and women, “the Robert Capa mystique” which he refers to. But he also has a sense of mission even if it is somewhat inarticulately defined. Early in the film he says that he feels called to be a messenger. He wants to show people what war is really like. He himself is just beginning to learn.
"Blood Trail" follows King from boyhood to manhood and it catalogs not only his own developing career, but it is also a candid behind-the-scenes look at the ways that pressures of the digital age - and increasing danger to reporters - have changed conflict coverage. In Sarajevo, Chechnya, and when working in Russia, King interacts frequently with the local populations and forms friendships. By the time he gets to Iraq he has grown more weathered and more cynical in part because he feels that his ability to capture telling images has been compromised by the security necessities of covering the war as a U.S. military embed. He can only wonder what the Iraqis he photographs might be thinking and is vigilant about how they may interpret and react to his presence with a camera.
These are provocative insights, but perhaps what makes "Blood Trail" most unique among the handful of films about war photography is its willingness to honestly explore topics that journalists are often loathe to talk about except perhaps amongst themselves. We see King reveal the problematic addictive nature of covering crisis, the tendency to seek refuge in substance abuse or sex, the emotional fallout whether it is flashbacks and PTSD or depression. And then there are the ethical and moral dilemmas that one lives with in the aftermath as a consequence of split second decisions made under fire. At one point King asks himself: “How many nameless bodies have I stepped over?” It is a question that calls to mind a harrowing scene from the film depicting a man still alive, his legs blown off imploring the photographer and filmmakers for help. What can they do? We get a glimpse of the unspeakable horrors that the professional witness confronts as well as the burden of such haunting decisions.
By the film’s end King is a husband and a father. There are some comic and tender moments – especially a scene with his young son in the film’s parallel narrative, which shows King at home in Tennessee deer hunting as a way to get away. There is perhaps an ironic reference to the Hollywood movie "The Deer Hunter.". In that film Michael, played by Robert De Niro, says: "One bullet. The deer has to be taken with one shot. I try to tell people that, they don't listen."
King can certainly get “the shot” when he is out on the battlefield with his camera. He is a “successful” war photographer, but as he reflects on his life and career at home he is unsure why he risks his life when it seems to him that so few people who see his images can understand or really care about the people in the scenes that he documents. It turns out that King is not a very good deer hunter in the film. He doesn’t fit neatly into the boxes that society constructs for its war heroes. And yet like many soldiers who come home from battle he seems to feel he has no choice but to return. This too should give us pause.
Filmmakers Parry and Smith, founders of London’s Frontline Club, will be present at the Austin screenings.
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